


The Flipside

by jellybeanforest



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Bisexuality, Canon Compliant, M/M, Petty Squabbling, Rivals to Lovers, Slowburn Found Family, ThorQuill Week 2019, endgame spoilers, thorquill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 16:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20085067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest
Summary: [Endgame Spoilers]In a timeline where Thanos, his daughters, and his forces disappear without a trace in 2014, petty thief Peter Quill reluctantly joins forces with the bounty hunting duo sent by Yondu in order to find a buyer for the Orb. Meanwhile, after Ultron’s defeat, Thor becomes suspicious of forces manipulating galactic events and resolves to track down the remaining Infinity Stones in a bid to stave off universal Armageddon. That sounds right and noble and all, but the crew of the Milano have only one question: How much does saving the Galaxy pay?For Thorquill Week 2019 Day 2 - Getting Together





	The Flipside

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place after Endgame, so if you haven’t watched it yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please turn back now. 
> 
> For those of you who are left: In Endgame, Thanos destroys the Infinity Stones, forcing the Avengers to time travel to earlier points in time to “borrow” the stones. This essentially creates alternate time lines where events are slightly different than canon. However, during the retrieval of the Power stone in 2014, Thanos learns of the main 2023 time line and decides to travel to the original time line in order to prevent the undoing of the Snap. He brings along his army along with Nebula and Gamora. With the exception of his daughters, Thanos and his forces are snapped instead. This means that there is an alternate 2014 timeline where Thanos’s entire army disappears and everything after GotG’s opening scene doesn’t happen (including GotG2). However, events on Earth happen as normal up to Infinity War (which doesn’t occur for obvious reasons), so the rest of canon is largely unaffected.  
For the purposes of this fic, the events of Age of Ultron (released 5/2015) occur shortly after GotG (released 8/2014). In the original timeline, Thor’s opening monologue from Thor Ragnarok (11/2017) reveals that he went looking for the Infinity Stones after Age of Ultron but didn’t find any in the intervening years. However, in this alternate universe, without Gamora to convince Peter to give the Orb to Nova Prime, Rocket tries to find a new buyer for their score. Thor answers but is interested in more than the Stone.
> 
> The earliest scenes will be pretty much the same as GotG, so I will try to gloss over them, replicating some of the dialogue from canon, and not dwell on what is already shown in the movie. Due to Gamora’s absence, the story pretty much diverges early on after the Broker scene where she and Peter originally met.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter steals the Orb and is almost immediately captured by Rocket and Groot, who plan to turn him into Yondu for the 40,000 unit bounty on his head.

Peter could never figure out what hit him. One minute, he’s dancing along to the swinging beats of _Come and Get Your Love_, using a member of the local fauna as a sweet microphone and really getting into the groove, and the next he’s twitching on the ground shortly before glitching to black. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes, but he checks his various pockets to find nothing amiss, and the Orb, which should have been encapsulated in the Vault across a short moat, lying inches from his right hand. He chalks it up to the world’s most inept kidney thieves, who inexplicably left payment for their stolen wares without removing the goods. Well… that, or witches.

Probably.

He palms the Orb, tossing it in the air and catching it to check heft and spin, then stands and nervously pats his torso all around with his free hand to ensure bodily integrity, exhaling in relief when he finds no bandages, cuts, or unexpected bruising. So, while the blackout is certainly disconcerting, he tries not to think about it too hard.

This feat becomes exponentially easier to accomplish when the cavalry arrive soon after.

“Drop it!” A dark man with blazing blue eyes and a sizeable weapon commands him.

“Uh… hey?” Peter looks upon the newcomer in surprise while two henchmen flank him, their blasters up and poised for attack.

“Drop it, now!” Their leader shouts.

“Hey, cool man. No problem.” Peter drops the Orb, which rolls towards the other man. He holds up his hands in a placating manner, showing he is unarmed. “No problem at all,” he assures him.

Their leader collects the Orb but is not so easily satisfied. He holds it up to Peter and demands, “How do you know about this?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Peter replies truthfully before mixing in a lie. “I’m just a junker, man. I was just… just checking stuff out.”

“You don’t look like a junker. You’re wearing Ravager garb,” he points out, his tone accusatory.

Peter insists he is mistaken. The outfit was some cast-off he found. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s just Peter Quill, inconsequential nobody, and would like to go about his day, if the man would be so kind as to call off his goons.

But the leader – Korath, he would later learn – is not fooled, insisting that they bring him to some asshole named Ronan.

Peter is not about to comply, and thanks to his show of ineptitude and general harmlessness, they vastly underestimate him. He quickly vaporizes the henchman, shoots Korath to retrieve the Orb, and manages to dodge Korath’s answering blasts to make it back to the Milano and freedom.

He barely escapes Morag with the Orb, his life, and a name: Ronan.

It’s the third he comes to regret.

“Ronan?” The Broker practically squeaks before rounding the counter and pushing Peter towards the door of his shop. “I’m sorry, Mr. Quill. I truly am. But I want no part of this transaction if Ronan is involved.”

Peter tries to plant his feet in the ground, unwilling to be herded out. “Woah! Woah! Woah, woah! Who’s Ronan?”

The Broker is breathing heavily, clearly terrified at the mere mention of the name. “A Kree fanatic outraged by the peace treaty, who will not rest until Xandarian culture, my culture, is wiped from existence!”

They’re almost at the exit.

Peter can’t believe his bad luck. What is he going to do without a buyer? He can’t very well return to Yondu after blatantly ripping him off and ignoring all follow-up calls save the one answered by… Berna? Benchet? He’d be stew for sure. Besides, the Orb was supposed to be _the_ score, the one that would enable him to finally leave the old man and strike out on his own with the security of a hefty little nest egg.

“Woah; come on!” Peter tries to appeal to reason. The commission alone should be enough to sway The Broker.

The stars-damned weasel doesn’t bite, continuing the push him the remaining distance. “He’s someone whose bad side I’d rather not be on.”

“What? What about my bad side?” Peter sputters.

The Broker waves open the steel-reinforced doors, pushing Peter outside. “Farewell, Mr. Quill!” With another frantic flail, he closes them.

“Hey! We had a deal, bro!” Peter bellows, but The Broker has already locked him out.

His day can’t get any worse.

Dark cloth falls over him from behind, but before he can struggle, it’s pulled taut then his world tilts as he’s swept off his feet and crammed upside down against the soft bottom, his legs positioned above him, kicking uselessly into the firm back of what has to be a giant.

Someone much shorter punches his cramped shoulder from the side. “Stay still, won’t you!”

_At least two assailants,_ Peter thinks. He’s dealt with worse odds.

Pocketing the Orb into his jacket, Peter reduces his movements to light squirming, trying to jimmy a pocket laser from his pants while wishing (and not the first time) that his ass didn’t look so spectacular in tight, unforgiving leather. _How the fuck you even breathe in those?_ Kraglin had asked the first time Peter had ditched the standard Ravager uniform. The loose jumpsuit, with its many convenient hidden compartments, hadn’t done him any favors aesthetically-speaking, making his broader frame look downright boxy.

Now, he curses the way the leather pants crease at his hips, scrunching the pocket to near closing. He gives up on the pocket laser, bending his knee down to reach his boot instead, working his fingers into the shaft to pull out a thin knife.

Peter slices an opening into the bottom of the sack, then quickly widening the split with his fingers, he falls out onto his upper back with a soft _humph_ and a curse from one of his kidnappers. Briefly disoriented, Peter notes the crack team who finally got the drop on the legendary Star-Lord is comprised of an Ent and a foul-mouthed Teddy Ruxpin. He quickly rolls over and scrambles to his feet.

The talking raccoon is on him immediately, clambering up his shoulders to attach himself to Peter’s head as Peter tries to stand and buck him off.

“Grab him, Groot! Don’t let him escape!” The raccoon shouts, scrabbling swift paws over Peter’s face, using his nose and cheeks as climbing holds.

“Get off me, man!” Peter tries to grab hold of the slippery son-of-a-bitch, but finds himself immobilized by creeping branches encircling his arms, firmly pinning them to his sides. Luckily, this places his hands near his now-accessible pockets, so he hikes up his trapped arms to palm the pocket laser out, angling it up and backwards to cut the branches at the root. The Ent – apparently named Groot – tumbles backwards, away from Peter, narrowly avoiding being cut in twain.

The raccoon is not so easy to shake. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing, you asshole!” he shouts as he curls his singed tail around, batting Peter in the face and suffocating him with the stench of burnt hair.

Blinded, Peter runs ahead, trying to shake the unwanted passenger clawing his back and shoulders. He doesn’t get very far when he bounces off an angular pillar, crashing to the floor while finally bucking Teddy Ruxpin off. The branches readily snap under his weight, finally freeing his arms. Peter recovers quickly, rolling back over to his feet to take off down the walkway and drop to the lower level of the mezzanine to escape.

Groot rappels down with his growing feelers, torn bag thrown over his shoulder and latched into place, while the raccoon follows Peter more directly, vaulting over the side to land atop their bounty, forcing him to the ground yet again in a pained pile. The Orb pops out of Peter's jacket, rolling several yards away to stop at Groot’s feet.

Much to Peter’s consternation, Groot bends over to pick it up, curiously rolling the sphere in his palm and poking at the indentations.

“Drop it, Groot! It might be a bomb!” Ruxpin commands, still trying to wrangle Peter on the ground.

“He’s got a bomb!” A Xandarian bystander echoes, amplifying Ruxpin’s assertion. His cry reverberates across the plaza, infecting the surrounding populace, now screaming and tripping over each other to get away from Groot and ‘the bomb.’

Peter tries to shake off the raccoon. He figures the chaos will grant him cover to reclaim the Orb and lose his bumbling tail in the fleeing horde, but Ruxpin has long tired of his antics, tasering him with a handheld device (twice in one day… that’s not exactly a record, but it doesn’t bode well for Peter’s luck), locking his wrists together, then dragging him behind a column, seemingly to prevent trampling. Whatever they’re after, Groot and Teddy Ruxpin obviously need Peter alive, which means he will have time to work out another, better deal with his captors in exchange for his freedom.

Peter can work with that.

However, just as the residual twitching of his muscles subsides and he can just about feel his fingers again, Peter hears the booming tenor of Nova Corps cruisers.

“Place the explosive device on the ground slowly, then back away and hold your hands up,” Peter hears a Nova Corpsman order. There’s a pause, long enough for compliance, then: “By the authority of the Nova Corps, you are under arrest.”

“Nice going, idiot,” Ruxpin growls, low and biting in Peter’s ear.

Peter is indignant. “Dude. How is this in any way my fault?”

That earns him a light smack upside the head. “Shouldn’t’ve run, dumbass.”

* * *

Teddy Ruxpin has a name – Rocket – and a plan.

“I’ll turn you over to Yondu and his Ravagers, collect my forty K, then bust Groot out of prison,” he says, mostly to himself, as he paces the space in front of Peter, arms crossed and paws nervously beating a staccato rhythm against his thin bicep. “Not anything I haven’t done once or twenty-two times before. Should be easy.”

Peter is fastened by his wrists to a vertical structural beam of the Milano’s hull while his legs are lashed together, but Rocket failed to secure his most dangerous asset: his mouth. “You could do that,” Peter begins, keeping his tone nonchalant, “but you’ll be saying goodbye to the biggest score you have ever seen.”

Rocket sounds unimpressed. “What? You going to offer me double to let you go? Like I haven’t heard that a million times before, buddy. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“Way more than that. I was on my way to cash in on the biggest payout you’ve ever laid eyes on when you and your partner interrupted me,” Peter says. Rocket isn’t facing him, but Peter can tell he is interested by the way his ears perk up and swivel towards his direction. “Let me go, and we’ll break out your partner and split the score, 50-50.”

“And how do I know you won’t ditch me the second I let you out?” Rocket looks over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing, but he’s not saying no, at least not yet.

“For one, I’m a man of my word–”

Rocket scoffs, abruptly turning away.

Okay, based on why Yondu issued the bounty, maybe Peter deserves that.

“–And two, the score was confiscated by Nova Corps with your partner, Groot was it? I don’t help you, I don’t get paid,” he finishes. “So, what do you say? We got a deal?”

Rocket stares back at him, contemplating the variables, calculating whether the potential reward was worth forfeiting his guaranteed bounty, before coming to a decision. “Whatever you stole from Yondu must’ve been worth way more than the forty K he put on your head,” he concludes, reaching for Peter’s restraints. “Why else would he want you back so badly?”

“Control issues, probably,” Peter shrugs. It is the best explanation he can think of as to why Yondu never allowed him to stray far from the Ravagers, despite the fact that Peter had long since reached his age of majority and should theoretically be allowed to make his own life decisions. Yondu claimed Peter owed him, but the way Yondu acted, it was like the old man thought he owned Peter. “And for the record, I didn’t steal the Orb from Yondu. I was the guy who collected it and had to fight my way through some hired guns to keep it – Not you,” Peter clarifies at Rocket’s annoyed expression. “Some other guys from before. Competitors, I think. Anyway, if anything, I earned it fair and square.” He keeps the explanation nonspecific, remembering The Broker’s reaction to Ronan’s name. That little bit of information will be shared on a need-to-know basis from now on, and Rocket didn’t need to know at this time. Or ever.

“Split it three ways. I got another partner to consider,” Rocket negotiates, paws stilling on the restraints, waiting for Peter’s verbal assent.

Peter twists against the restrictive bindings. “He’s not even here!”

“Don’t matter. He was thrown in the clink because of this Orb of your’s, and he’s going to help us get it out, so he deserves a fair share.”

Peter grumbles, but he supposes a third of a once-in-a-lifetime score is better than spending the next twenty-six years in the brig of the Eclector or worse, so he nods in agreement. “Fine. Split three ways. Partners?”

Peter hisses when the cord pinches the flesh of his wrist as Rocket none-too-gently re-positions it to undo the knotted mess around the locking mechanism, then moves towards his ankles.

“Partners,” Rocket concurs, finally freeing his temporary associate.

Peter straightens up and shakes out the ache in his shoulders before pumping his fists in relief.

“Now, let’s find out where they took Groot and the Orb.”

* * *

“The Kyln! What the hell did he do to earn a stay there?” Peter exclaims, looking over Rocket’s shoulder at the screen where he had hacked Nova records.

“Grievous bodily harm,” Rocket reads off Groot’s rap sheet, “Mercenary activity – but you already knew about that – aaaaand escape from a number of prior prison sentences. That’ll do it, though that last one’s on me.”

“I have a feeling the first two are also on you,” Peter mumbles, but Rocket ignores him. “So, how’re we going to spring Groot from the Kyln of all places?”

“I’ll work out the details. You just work on getting the supplies we’re gonna need for the job.” Rocket taps his notes in the corner of the screen, transferring the list onto Peter’s holopad. “Should be able to find everything at a decent scrapyard.”

Peter knew a few junkers from his Ravager contacts, luckily more than a few of them open to double-dealing behind Yondu’s back now that Peter had gone rogue. There wasn’t much honor among thieves, even less so among Yondu’s associates for reasons unclear to Peter, but at least this time, such duplicity worked in his favor.

Most of the items are self-explanatory and obtainable – conductive wire, portable power sources, a frightening number of explosives. Peter’s eyes scan down then stop at one item.

“Hey, what are you planning to do to my ship?”

Rocket doesn’t bother turning around, still reviewing schematics of the Kyln he surreptitiously downloaded from Nova systems. “What do you mean?”

“This is a lot of shielding. You’re not planning to crash through the Kyln, are you?” Peter asks, “ One: There’s no way that’s going to work. It’s not like there’s a thermal exhaust port we have to hit just right to blow the whole thing. The Kyln isn’t the Death Star. And two: Even if it were, that’d kill us all. Has no one in space ever seen _Star Wars_?” He rubs his eye with the pad of one palm before sliding the hand back to rake fingers through his hair. “And last but certainly not least, three: the Milano is a sexy girl. You are not going to bulk her up only to crash her into some prison to break out your platonic life partner.”

“And _our_ Orb,” Rocket reminds him. “Also, Groot ain’t my ‘platonic life partner’–”

“I don’t need to know the details of your sex life,” Peter interjects then shudders, his imagination already supplying new and exciting meanings to the word _treehugger_.

Rocket sighs, pinching the bridge of his snout in frustration. “Ain’t that kind’a partner either. And no, that’s light absorption shielding,” he continues, as if talking to a particularly slow-witted child. “For stealth. The Kyln is a fortress. It’s mostly self-sufficient with regards to laundry, power, sewage treatment, and the like, but it ain’t like they’re chopping up dead prisoners into a fine bone meal porridge to feed the lot of them. Not yet, at least. So they still gotta get their food from somewhere. I say we intercept a delivery shipment from their chow supplier undetected, ‘borrow’ their ship and some uniforms then slip inside the Kyln. We take out a couple guards at intake quietly, locate Groot and the Orb, then sneak both out in empty delivery crates. They got cameras on potential exits and guards in the watchtower, but Kyln internal security is real lax. They barely keep track of inmate deaths and don’t care about their specific activities on the inside so long as no one escapes.”

“Alright, I guess that makes sense…” Peter quirks a brow, reviewing the supply list Rocket had compiled. “I just thought we were going to blow a hole out the side and fight our way through. You know, shock and awe tactics.”

“This might be hard for you to fathom, but sometimes, a job requires a certain finesse your type is incapable of.”

Peter frowns, breathes in, and exhales on a three-count – it wouldn’t due to strangle the ornery rodent – before asking, “Then… why all the explosives?”

“You can never have too many explosives, Quill.”

“You don’t think it’s going to work.” Peter’s tone is accusatory. “You think this job’s going south the first snag we hit.”

“Well, you are the unknown variable in the plan. I can’t cover every possible way you can screw this up,” Rocket snaps. “So, the explosives are a multi-purpose solution, like duct tape.” He sighs then, massaging the line of his closed eyes as if to stave off a Quill-shaped headache. “Just follow my lead and we’ll all get out of this fine.”

_Yondu used to do that, too,_ Peter thinks distantly before squashing the sentiment. This partnership with Rocket, transient though it may prove to be, is a completely different dynamic than the one he left. And even if it isn’t, he only has to suffer through a few more days – a couple weeks, tops – before they can sell off the Orb.

And then…

Then Peter will be free.

**Author's Note:**

> At some point, I may write a companion piece where 2018!Peter tries to woo 2014!Gamora in 2023 while 2023!Thor tries to reclaim his mojo, but I’m sure GotG3 will more than cover that ground.


End file.
